Help and ideas for busy numbers people
“The key didn’t match any rows in the table” is one of the most common errors in Power Query.
The way it’s always explained is that it is caused when the original data changes format or name, or has been deleted.
However, there is a third, related option, which I’m writing about here because it stumped me for a while.
Continue reading ““The key didn’t match any rows in the table” error in Power Query”
I attended the 2025 Global Excel Summit last week – this time in person for the first time.
It’s become a bit of a tradition that I blog about what I learned, so here goes!
Continue reading “What I learned at the 2025 Global Excel Summit”
How do you learn more Power Query? This is a post addressed to people who have already learned initial navigation and have played around with a few of the buttons. Perhaps you attended one of my Introduction to Power Query courses.
How do you connect to a Sharepoint folder in Power Query if you don’t have “from Sharepoint folder” as an option?
Continue reading “No “From Sharepoint Folder” option in Power Query? No problem!”
I attended the Global Excel Summit 2024 online earlier this month, and in no particular order, here are ten things I learned.
The most inspiring session was given by two people who work for Chanel, who explained how they had used Power Query to reduce thousands of hours of processing time.
In the middle of a day that was focussed on the theoretical uses of AI, it was fantastic to hear about a tried and tested but scandalously underused technology being used to deliver real business change.
More generally their approach to business process improvement sounded fascinating and I’d love to see this become more widely known.
Continue reading “Ten things I learned at the Global Excel Summit 2024”
I recently designed and delivered some Excel training for auditors. Specifically, it was Excel training for audit trainees who had just started at the firm.
I benefitted enormously at the start of my career when my employer arranged for all new audit trainees to have Excel training as part of our induction. Even though it was pretty basic, it established a good grounding in things like formula construction, absolute and relative cell references, and a few shortcuts.
Continue reading “Excel training for auditors”This blog post probably won’t make a lot of sense unless you read Part 1 first.
Having customised our VAT report in Xero in part 1, we’re now going to use Power Query to turn this into a journal.
Continue reading “Monthly irrecoverable VAT adjustments with Xero and Power Query: Part 2”
Why isn’t Power Query better known amongst finance teams?
Continue reading “Why isn’t Power Query better known amongst finance teams?”
On the face of it, processing timesheets with Power Query ought to be fairly straightforward. By “processing timesheets” I am primarily thinking about records of hours worked that feed into payroll or job costing calculations.
Continue reading “Processing timesheets with Power Query – what about the human factor?”
This post sets out the five most useful new Excel functions for finance teams, based on my experience. By “new” I mean available in 2019 or later versions of Excel (including Office 365).
Note – this post was written in January 2022 and reflects what was available at that time.
Many of us are self-taught in Excel, and it can be hard to keep up with the changes. In the past few years there have been loads of new Excel functions that replace and add to existing ones that you might be familiar with.
Continue reading “The five most useful new Excel functions for finance teams”